5 Websites and Apps That Will Help You Plan Your Trip to Europe

Planning a trip around Europe can be exciting.

It can also become a little overwhelming.

At first, everything seems simple. You pick a few cities, book some flights, reserve a hotel and you're done. Then you start looking at how to get from Paris to Amsterdam, whether the train is better than the bus, which airport is actually closest to your destination, and why that €29 flight suddenly costs €87 after you've added luggage.

Before you know it, you've opened twelve browser tabs, downloaded six apps and started questioning whether you even wanted to go to Europe in the first place.

Luckily, you don't need to figure everything out from scratch. There are some genuinely useful websites and apps that can make European travel much easier. These are a few that I keep coming back to, especially when I'm trying to plan a trip without spending a fortune.

1. Mapy.com - for when you want to actually explore

If your European trip is going to involve more than walking between your hotel, the main square and the nearest restaurant, take a look at Mapy.com.

Formerly known as Mapy.cz, this is one of my favorite mapping tools, particularly when it comes to walking, hiking and cycling. Google Maps is fantastic for navigating cities, finding restaurants or figuring out which train station you need. But once you leave the pavement and start heading into a forest, a national park or the mountains, you want a map that knows more than just where the roads are.

That's where Mapy.com really shines. It has detailed hiking and cycling trails, and in many places you'll find paths that aren't particularly obvious on standard mapping apps. You can also download maps for offline use, which is something I strongly recommend if you're heading somewhere with unreliable phone reception.

And this isn't only useful for serious hikers. Even if your idea of a hike is a pleasant two-hour walk followed by lunch, having a reliable map can make exploring an unfamiliar place much more relaxing.

The app works in Europe and increasingly well in other parts of the world too. There are free and paid options, depending on how much offline functionality you need.

2. FlixBus - because sometimes the bus really is the best option

One of the great things about traveling around Europe is the sheer number of ways you can get from one place to another.

Trains are often the first thing Americans think about, and for good reason. European rail travel can be fantastic. But don't automatically assume that the train is always the cheapest or most convenient option.

FlixBus has an enormous network connecting cities across Europe, and sometimes the prices are hard to beat. If you're traveling on a budget, a bus can turn a potentially expensive journey into a very affordable one.

There is, however, one thing I always recommend: check the train before booking the bus.

A €20 bus ticket might look like a fantastic deal until you discover that the train costs €35 and gets you there three hours earlier. On the other hand, sometimes you'll find a bus for a fraction of the train fare, and then the decision is easy.

Don't just compare ticket prices. Compare the entire journey - the departure location, travel time, arrival location and how much hassle is involved.

After all, the cheapest option isn't always the cheapest when you factor in your vacation time.

3. AZair.eu - my favorite tool for finding cheap flights

Now we get to one of my personal favorites.

AZair.eu is a flight search engine that looks, to put it kindly, like it could use a little help from a modern web designer. It has a certain charming "website from 1998" feeling to it.

But don't judge it by its appearance.

There is a brilliant idea hiding underneath that slightly outdated interface: you don't always have to know where you want to go.

Most flight search engines expect you to enter a departure airport, a destination and specific dates. AZair gives you much more flexibility. You can search from several airports or even an entire country, use a range of dates instead of one exact day, and specify how long you want to stay.

And then there is my favorite option: "Take me anywhere."

This is absolutely perfect when you know you want to travel but haven't decided where.

Let's say you have a long weekend in October and you're sitting at home thinking, "I really need to get out of here." Instead of spending three hours trying to decide whether you should go to Rome, Prague or Lisbon, you can let the search engine surprise you.

You might discover a cheap flight to a city you had never considered.

That's one of the things I love about traveling in Europe. You don't always have to start with a destination. Sometimes you can start with a cheap flight and see where it takes you.

I recommend playing around with AZair for a while. It has a lot of settings, and once you understand how they work, you can find some surprisingly good combinations.

4. Meetup - because sometimes the best thing to do isn't another tourist attraction

Imagine you've spent two days sightseeing. You've seen the cathedral, the palace, the famous square and the museum everyone told you not to miss.

Now it's 7 p.m., you're tired, and you don't particularly want to spend another €40 on a tourist attraction.

What do you do?

Try looking at what the local community is doing.

Meetup can be a great way to find events happening in the city that have nothing to do with traditional tourism. Depending on where you are, you might find language exchanges, hiking groups, board game nights, photography walks, workshops, lectures or all sorts of oddly specific gatherings you would never have found on a normal tourist website.

Maybe there's a group learning a local language. Maybe someone is organizing a board game night. Maybe you discover that there is a group of people meeting to play a traditional card game you've never heard of.

And that's exactly why I like it.

You aren't just visiting a place. You're getting a chance to see what people who actually live there are doing.

Of course, there is one potential downside.

You might accidentally meet someone you really like and make a new friend.

You've been warned.

5. Your government's travel website - the boring one you should actually read

Okay, this is probably the least exciting recommendation on the list.

It's also one of the most important.

Before you travel internationally, check the official travel information provided by your own government. If you're American, that means checking the U.S. Department of State's information for the countries you're planning to visit.

These pages can tell you about entry requirements, visas, local laws, safety and security concerns, emergency information and where to find your country's embassy or consulate if something goes wrong.

Hopefully, you'll never need any of it.

But that's exactly the point.

Nobody plans a vacation expecting to lose their passport or run into an emergency. If something does happen, however, you don't want your first step to be frantically searching Google while standing in an unfamiliar city.

Travel should be about adventure, but a little preparation goes a long way toward making that adventure a good one.

So before you leave, spend a few minutes checking the official information for every country on your itinerary.

Do you really want to plan all of this yourself?

There is something satisfying about planning your own trip.

Finding the perfect flight. Discovering a little hotel nobody seems to know about. Building the itinerary and watching everything slowly come together.

But there is another side to it.

You can spend hours comparing flights, checking train schedules, figuring out which airports actually make sense, researching neighborhoods, reading hotel reviews and trying to work out whether your "two-hour train ride" actually turns into half a day of travel once you include all the connections.

And if you're planning a multi-country trip, things get complicated very quickly.

That's where I can help.

At Let Me Plan Your Travel, I take all those little pieces and turn them into one coherent trip - based on what you actually want to see and experience.

You don't have to copy somebody else's "perfect Europe itinerary." You don't have to squeeze ten countries into three weeks because a travel influencer told you that's what you should do.

Tell me what you're looking for, how much time you have and what kind of traveler you are, and I'll help you build a trip that makes sense.

You can spend your evenings planning your European vacation. Or you can spend them getting excited about it.

If you'd rather have someone else take care of the research, connections and itinerary, let me plan your travel.